From #MeToo to #TimesUp: How undocumented women fit in the Women’s Movement

Ai-Jen Poo, the founder of National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), participated in the Define American Film Festival last weekend as a panelist for the conversion titled: "The Women’s Movement: Where do we go from here?"

Ai-Jen Poo, the founder of National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), participated in the Define American Film Festival last weekend as a panelist for the conversion titled: "The Women’s Movement: Where do we go from here?"

Julia HaleHOY

Last year, hundreds of women across the country liberated themselves through the hashtag #MeToo, in which survivors of sexual harassment and assault came forward on social media. The movement, ignited by Hollywood, quickly spread to the White House. However, there’s a group of women in particular that are afraid to speak up: those immigrants who are undocumented.

In the wake of the 2018 #TimesUp movement, a unified call was initiated by women in entertainment that pushes for changes to turn workplaces into a safe and equitable place for all women; those at the forefront of the Women’s Movement are working to raise awareness of how immigration intersects with sexual harassment and assault.

Ai-Jen Poo, the co-founder and director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), noted the “powerful connection” between humane immigration reform and eliminating sexual harassment and assault against women beyond Hollywood.

“What immigration enforcement (law) does, is it actually makes you afraid to seek services that you need when you’re in danger,” said Poo, who was one of four women in a panel discussion regarding the women’s movement at the Define American Film Festival in Chicago this past Saturday. “It really pushes back into the shadows thousands, and maybe millions, of survivors who we actually need to come forward in order to make our communities and our workplaces safe for everyone.”

Following allegations of sexual assault against film producer Harvey Weinstein, thousands of stories of abuse flooded social media with the hashtag #MeToo. However, the movement has focused mainly on exposing harassment to women in Hollywood and politics, while ordinary women —particularly those women who live in the country illegally— tend to be placed in situations of greater vulnerability and, through policy, can be denied access to justice, according to the National Network of Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR).

For migrants and refugee women, sexual harassment can be pervasive in transit, crossing borders, in refugee camps, detention centers, in workplaces and neighborhoods, the NNIRR reported.

“This administration has instilled so much fear in the undocumented community, and in particular, women who tend to be mothers, and that fear has made these women, for the most part, be afraid to report anything,” said Paola Mendoza, film director and former Artistic Director for the Women’s March on Washington.

In Los Angeles, there was a drop in the number of rapes reported to the police by Latina women. According to the report by the Los Angeles Police Department, rape stats dropped by 25 percent, and domestic violence stats were down by 10 percent amongst the city’s Hispanic residents from January to March 2017, in comparison to the same period in 2016.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck recounted in a news release that “the Department believes deportation fears may be preventing Hispanic members of the community from reporting when they are victimized.”

“When you are afraid to work with the police or work with those that are supposed to protect you, of course, incidents of sexual harassment, sexual violence, domestic abuse, rise,” said Mendoza, who led the panel discussion on Saturday. “These women and their perpetrators are aware of the simple and horrible fact that the system is not allowing them to have equal rights.”

Domestic workers are the sector of the economy with the most significant concentration of undocumented workers of any workforce, said Poo, “and they face a unique position when it comes to reporting sexual assault.”

“There’s a particular vulnerability to that, and the fact that (their) workplaces are behind closed doors,” she said. “There’s no water cooler; there’s no HR (human resources) department. Often the only person who knows that you’re working there is your employer and maybe your family, so there’s a ton of isolation. It creates this real breeding ground for people who want to take advantage of that.”

On April 24, the NDWA and the Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, organized a delegation of more than 100 domestic workers and farmworker women to meet with Congress members to demand protection in the workplace, including funding for culturally and linguistically appropriate resources for domestic workers and farm workers who make complaints.

While acknowledging that some could argue that it was mostly white women, or those in privileged positions, who responded in the most recent wave of the #MeToo movement —which was initially started in 2006 by activist Tarana Burke— Mendoza believes that the collaboration between the women of the #TimesUp movement in Hollywood and the women from Alianza Nacional de Campesinas (or the National Alliance of Female Farmworkers), will help the undocumented women come out of the shadows.

Amongst other initiatives, the #TimesUp movement announced its commitment to a $13 million legal defense fund administered by the National Women's Law Center to support lower-income women seeking justice for sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. “Women (who use) their privilege to shine a light on the less-privileged (ones), has allowed us to see how we should be moving forward (with these movements),” said Mendoza.

Regarding the future of the women’s movement, Poo believes that we must now attempt to “understand the particular vulnerabilities” of different women.

“What I want to do is see the #MeToo movement and its future as about really… pulling back the curtain on every single type of environment where women are living and working,” said Poo. “And then we can update our policies to make sure that every single workplace and every single worker has protections and can be safe at work at some fundamental level, (but) to me that also includes immigration policies that allow for people not have to live in fear of being separated from their families when speaking up about violence and abuse.”

Julia Hale is a second-year journalism student at DePaul University. She collaborated with HOY’s Laura Rodriguez on this story as part of the coverage for Define American Film Festival.

Contact Reporter

@LAURA_N_ROD / Larodriguez@hoyllc.com

The third annual Define American Film Festival (DAFF) took place in Chicago from April 20-22. The festival is focused on issues of racial justice, immigrant rights and activism. Its goal is to take issues revolving immigrants —documented and undocumented— and minorities, beyond the political scheme...